thanks for your fascinating posts.
Interestingly, the following records were all won with the Fw 190, all in JG54 and all in 1943:
- Rudorffer's most kills in one mission (6Nov)
- Lang's most kills in one day (3Nov)
- Lang's most kills in one month (October)
- Nowotny most kills in one year
- Scheel's best kill per missions ratio

The missing victory in the Tony Wood list was an Il-2 claimed at 14:17 north of Wyschgorod as his 112th victory according to Die Jagdfliegerverbände der Deutschen Luftwaffe Teil 12/III by Prien, Stemmer, Rodeike and Bock. I hope this helps.

Regarding Scheel firstly I could find only seventy confirmations for him. Regarding the biggest day of 3rd November 1943, forty-four confirmations in the East for the Luftwaffe, of which thirty-four were for JG 54, of which twenty-nine for Lang's 5th Staffel.

Norbert Hannig mentions the day in some detail in his autobiography, but it doesn't match-up. Perhaps there was also one unconfirmed claim. If I was to guess who the enabler was for his overclaiming I would have generally said Alfred Groß, however looking at this day I would say Reinhold Hoffmann, but maybe the whole staffel, maybe the whole Gruppe. But not nice to label them all the same........innocent until proven guilty!

Rattling on about Emil Lang. I have viewed many flubuch of late, and have been surprised about just how small a group they flew in, usually a Rotte or Schwarm. This being the case, it is likely that Lang would be flying in such a small group, therefore it wouldn't require the whole Staffel to be "overclaiming".

I have slit them into four groups, four sorties based on the time duration they had, it looks like they were flying together, but not necessarily so.

Someone within our little club should have Russian losses/crash-sites who can help. I am assuming all crash-sites are feasible with the given information.

I looked at the internet profile on Lang, it appears to have added three "unknown" claims to boost his total to 173, 173 could be a myth duplicated over the decades until it's "cast in stone" like Rudorffer flying 1000 combat missions and baling-out so many times....there is no evidence to prove these "facts", actually his flugbuch proves he flew half this number of combats. Like the Hartmann claiming Mustangs it become "fact" until proven false.

Also the fourth and sixth Staffel of JG 54 were not claiming like the fifth, are we to believe that coincidently the fifth Staffel just had better pilots, like 7./JG 52 and especially like 9./JG 52.

Regarding your last sentence, 4./J.G. 54 was flying FW 190 fighter-bomber missions in the northern sector at the time, so it had very few opportunities to claim aerial victories, hence why it wasn't claiming like the 5. Staffel.

The missing victory in the Tony Wood list was an Il-2 claimed at 14:17 north of Wyschgorod as his 112th victory according to Die Jagdfliegerverbände der Deutschen Luftwaffe Teil 12/III by Prien, Stemmer, Rodeike and Bock. I hope this helps.

Hi Leo.

According to Tony Wood, Lang made that claim on the next day, 4 November 1943.

OSPREY's "Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Aces of the Russian Front" by John Weal features the photo of a magazine cover of the "Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung". The headline about Emil Lang reads "Eighteen in one day - the return of the champion".